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Tuesday, January 8, 2013

Brief History of Herbalism through the Renaissance

Rue, Roses and Mint

This is my first contribution to my A & S 50 depth project in herbalism. I am kind of cheating here because this doubles as background handout for the classes I am teaching my mundane apprentices (I have three) on the history of herbalism, but I am trying to perfect the art of killing two birds with one stone as a form of time management.

The use of herbs as
medicine predates written history. Archeological findings from the Paleolithic
period show that plants were being used medicinally as early as 60, 000 years
ago. The oldest written documentation comes from Sumerian tablets listing medicinal
herbs which are over 5000 years old. Shennong pen Ts’ao ching the first
Chinese herbal has been dated to about 2700 BCE. The Egyptian, Ebers Papyrus,
has been dated to about 1550 BC and contains references to cannabis being used
to topically treat inflammation as well as 850 other medicinal plants. The
Rigveda, written around 1500 BC, is the earliest written documentation of
Ayurvedic principles, but it obviously stems from a body of knowledge that had
being collected for centuries previous to it being recorded on paper. The Sushruta
Samhita written in the 6th Century BC details plant, mineral and animal
preparations that are still used by Ayurvedic practitioners, today.

Greco-Roman Medicine

The earliest Greek herbals were written by Diocles of Carystus in the 3rd
Century BC. The information in his herbals seemed to be largely based on the
previously mentioned Egyptian works. His work was largely eclipsed by later
Greek physicians, Hippocrates, Dioscorides and Galen whose works were to form
the basis of medical practice for centuries to come.

Hippocrates
- ( 460 -370 BC) - De herbis et curis - Founder: Hippocratic School of
Medicine.
Dioscorides - (40 - 90 A.D.) - De Materia Medica written sometime between 50-68
A.D.
Galen - (131-200 A.D.) - Galen was known to have employed up to 20 scribes to
write his works and over 600 treatises are attributed to this group known as
the Galenic Corpus. He is probably most famous for his Art of Physick as
translated by Culpeper.

It
is important to note that the Hippocratic Corpus ( name of the collection of
writings attributed to Hippocrates) was , in fact, written by as many as 19
different authors over the course of many 100's of years, yet the information
in them is attributed to Hippocrates. Most of the writings seem to have been
written in last decades of the 5th century BC and the first half of the 4th
century BC and are probably those of a physicians college- perhaps the Cnidian
school although that is conjecture. We will probably never know. Also some people
will call mistakenly call Dioscorides and Galen, Romans. They were Greeks serving in the Roman
Army.

Dioscorides' De Materia Medica was probably the most influential herbal
ever written. It contained information on over 600 plants used for medicinal
purposes and those uses he described were the basis of most herbalism that was
practiced up until the 17th Century. Honestly you could probably make the
argument that information in it has been being used by herbalists up until the
present day.

The most important principle of early medical advice was moderation in all
things; however other principles put forth by these early physicians still
shape herbalism today. Urinalysis was used by the Ancient Greeks, although then
it was done primarily by using the senses; including taste. During this time,
there also developed an energetic diagnostic system based on humors and
temperaments that many herbalists still refer to today. I will discuss this
more completely at another time The Doctrine of
Signatures which, explained very briefly, states that the shape of an herb
and how it that is similar to body parts determines how it is to be used first
appeared in Greek Medicine, as well.

The Dark Ages or Early Middle Ages

After the fall of the Roman Empire things were fairly quiet in Europe. Medical
“schools” started appearing in the 9th century in Eastern locales such as
Persia and the Arab empire. Their practices were largely based on previous
Greek and Roman medicine. Benedictine monasteries and nunneries were the
primary source of Western European herbal knowledge and care during the Early
Middle Ages. They were famous for their “physick” gardens in which they grew
most of the herbs they used in their practices. Walafrid Strabo (808-849 CE)
wrote a Latin verse Hortulus that described such a garden. But they were really
only copying and passing along the Greco-Roman manuscripts. Very little new
knowledge was really being accumulated by these monks and nuns, at this time.
The lineage of the Physicians of Myddvai can be traced back to Wales in 800
C.E.

Bald's Leechbook was compiled under King Alfred's reign recorded by the
scribe Cild in about 900–950 CE.

This was also a time that saw the flourishing of folk-herbalism. Irish peasants
wise in the knowledge of plants became herb-doctors. Wise women and midwives
were providing a great deal of care to the folk in their village and would pass
along charms to help with healing. I've included a thesis about Medieval
Women's role in Medicine on the DVD. Stories of Irish leeches carrying a
bag—called a lés [lace]—full of medical preparations stem back to stories in
the Ulster cycle written around this time. I am actually going to write a
separate bit about Irish medicinal history because it is so wildly different
than the rest of Europe and is more pertinent to my persona.

The High Middle Ages. 1000-1300 C.E.

The High Middle Ages saw an upswing in the publishing of new herbals. The
Persian physician, Avicenna, wrote his herbal treatise, The Cannon of
Medicine, around 1025 AD. St Thomas Hospital in England was established in
1107.

The Anglo Saxon Herbarius Apuleii ( Herbal of Apuleius) based on earlier
Greek works was written sometime shortly before the Battle of Hastings detailed
a much smaller number of herbs than the Greek Herbals ( only 61) but it
describes their uses and where to find them which leads one to believe that
some wild crafting of plants occurring at the time. Another Anglo Saxon Herbal
compiled in the late tenth or early eleventh century was Lacnunga which
meant Remedies. It is in the book Leechdoms, Wortcunners and Starcraft of Early
England . The eleventh century also marked the beginning of the Irish Medical
“Leechdoms”; families who passed their knowledge down to each generation.

The Late Middle Age 1300- 1500

The Late Middle Ages began with the Great Famine and the Bubonic Plague. The
Greek Medicinal theories began to fall out of favor with the people because
they failed miserably at controlling the Plague and didn't touch the syphilis
epidemic that arose at the same time.

You will read about Four Thieves Vinegar from this time period. There are as
many stories as there are formulas, but it is basically understood that using some
sort of combination of herbs and vinegar, medicinally, kept these looters from succumbing to
the plague.

The Red Book of Hergest written just after 1382 contains herbal knowledge
attributed to the Physicians of Myddvai. The leechbook, The Book of the O'Lees written in 1443, partly in Latin
and partly in Irish detailed that family’s method of treating the common
diseases of the time.

The Early Renaissance
Paracelsus (1493-1541) Botany and medicine were one and the same until the 17th
Century. Paracelsus introduction of stronger more toxic chemicals to the
healing profession marked the beginning of the decline in the use of purely
plant materials as medicine. . While he worked primarily with plants, he was
the first to introduce chemicals as cures. For example mercury, despite its
toxic side-effects, was the cure for syphilis until 1947 when penicillin took
over.

John Gerard gets a lot of press for his The Herball or General Historie of
Plants published in 1597, but it has been pretty much proven at this point that
the herbal was basically plagiarized. The illustrations were from a German
botanical guide and the herbal information pretty much came from Rembert Dodoen’s
herbal Cruydeboeck published in 1554.

John Parkinson (1567–1650) an apothecary for the King of England, wrote his
gardening book Paradisi in Sole Paradisus Terrestris in 1629. His giant
herbal the Theatrum Botanicum published in 1640 included over 3000
herbs.

Nicholas Culpeper published The English Physician Enlarged in 1652 and
included in it an English translation of Galen's Art of Physick. Culpeper's
Complete Herbal published the next year was unique in that it brought
astrology into the picture. I have a copy of Culpeper's Galen translation but the
English is period and difficult to follow if you aren't familiar with it. My personal
version of Culpeper's Complete Herbal and English Physician is a facsimile of a
book which was modernized and published in 1826 and a little more reasonable to
get through.

Women Herbalists in European History

Some women were even able to attain renown as physicians. In the eleventh
century, the medical school in Salerno, Italy, allowed women to train as
physicians and to teach at the school. Trota of Salerno was one such woman and during
her time at Salerno she wrote at least part of, Passionibus Mulierum Curandorum (The Diseases of
Women) which you may hear referred to as Trotula Major.

In the 12th century a Benedictine nun, Hildegard of Bingen (1098 –1179), wrote
an herbal called Causes and Cures. Hildegard is probably the more famous of
historic female herbalists.

As the witch hunts progressed, it became less-and-less safe for ritual specialists to practice openly, however depending on their location and status women were able to practice medicine as part of their responsibilities to the manor. For example, Lady Grace Mildmay born in 1552 was member of the landed
gentry and a female practitioner.